My mission is to improve the world through design. I do this by fostering healthy and happy teams that create essential and beloved software and services.

Over the last 23 years…

I’ve led teams who have designed and built products and services that benefit millions of people across the world. This includes tools that unleash creativity (at Adobe), marketplaces that empower people across the world to shop, travel, and pay (at Google), global services that define the future of transportation (at Uber), and a revolutionary humanity-centered model for hospitality (at Airbnb). Today I’m the SVP of design at Slack where we build software that enables a future of work that is more simple, productive, and pleasant than anything that’s come before.

Here’s my journey…

Adobe 2001 - 2011

I began my career at Adobe as a product designer working across products ranging from Acrobat to Photoshop to Fireworks (a beloved precursor to Figma), Flash, Flex, and a wide range of tools for HTML and Actionscript developers. After six years as a designer I started my management career leading a design team that worked on early versions of web-oriented creative tools (Photoshop.com), and the Elements line of consumer friendly apps. Over time, I became the head of design for the Creative Suite, which eventually became the Creative Cloud. These formative years at Adobe allowed me to work side by side with some of the world’s most talented creative professionals and helped set the stage for my lifelong love of software and its ability to amplify people’s potential.

My final major project at Adobe was leading the design transformation of Adobe’s business model from “shrink wrapped” software released every 1.5 years (the Creative Suite) to a subscription based model that delivers continuous software innovation (the Creative Cloud). This two year project had me working with leaders across the company to visualize strategy, define product vision, and coordinate execution across teams to land the project seamlessly. The Creative Cloud was a massive shift in Adobe’s business, and it entirely changed Adobe’s way of building, delivering, and marketing software. In the years proceeding the Creative Cloud launch, Adobe saw their company valuation increase by 10x. Needless to say this project demonstrated that good design leads to good business.

Google 2011 - 2015

At Google, as the Head of Design for a product areas known collectively as Commerce, I led a 100 person team responsible for Shopping, Payments, Travel, and Offers. These teams - which to this day still operate as a unit - create marketplaces that enable merchants and travel providers worldwide to connect with customers. The Payments team enables customers to pay for goods and services across the world, both on and off Google via Google Pay. Google Offers was a short lived competitor to Groupon that taught me much, and specifically how to gracefully wind-down a team while maintaining morale.

During my 4.5 years at Google the Commerce design team was responsible for the design of Hotels in Search, Hotels in Maps, Flights, Trips, Product Listing Ads, Shopping in YouTube, the core Google Shopping experience, worldwide payment and disbursement methods, Google Wallet, and Google Pay. Each of these projects required great design - and even greater collaboration. Google is famous for its matrixed organizational model. To be successful within it requires a level of interpersonal skill and operational excellence unparalleled in industry. Working at the intersection of Search, Ads, YouTube, and Android, effective collaboration was imperative for me and my team. Further, many of these projects my team took from 0-1, which at a company as large and interconnected as Google, is a monumental effort.

As much as my time at Google was transformative for me as a design leader, I grew equally as an organizational and operational leader. Google offers excellent leadership training - both theoretical and applied - of which I took full advantage. Putting this leadership training into action, one of the highlights of my time at Google was, at the behest of the CEO, authoring and driving Google’s Principles of Product Excellence across the company as a means to improve Google’s organizational ability to deliver industry leading products.

Uber 2015 - 2017

My time at Uber began with me leading their worldwide Marketing and Growth design teams. This was during the time of Uber’s most rapid expansion. My team was at the forefront of growth within China, South East Asia, India, and South America, building product and deploying marketing campaigns at breakneck speed. It was fascinating work learning about local culture, the characteristics of city design, the dynamics of people and goods throughout cities over time, and the functional qualities of different transportation systems. Multiply that by nearly every major city and you’ll get a sense of the fascinating and complex considerations associated with designing at Uber. I wrote more about what it was like to design at Uber in this article.

Over the course of my first year and after a number of reorganizations (and as a reflection of my organizational leadership experience gained at Google), I became the leader of the global Design organization, a team of 200 people whose roles encompassed Product Design, Research, Design Engineering, and Content Design. My teams were responsible for building and shipping the core rider and driver apps, specialized regional designs for riders and drivers around the world (the continued work of the Marketing & Growth team), developing payment and disbursement systems in every major currency, creating tools to manage the real-time dynamics of millions of daily trips and tools and policies to encourage trust and safety, and incredible data visualizations that revealed the flow of people and goods throughout cities. My team also contributed to the growth and development of the Autonomous Technology Group.

Design at Uber required work far beyond the screen. Yes, much of the work we did focused on the software used by riders, drivers, city operational squads, data scientists, and autonomous systems. But even more than that we did service design in a relatively wild and unconstrained environment. The end-to-end experience at Uber may start with the app, but it continues into a journey where people must navigate their environment (sidewalk, airport, etc) to get to the car, engage with their driver, experience the drive itself, and then pay and rate the trip. On the flip side the driver experience required even more complex service design; we were helping drivers learn a new way of working, delivering customer service, and building their business. All incredibly exciting and fulfilling design challenges that impacted humanity at a grand scale.

It’s important to note that my time at Uber coincided with its most intense era of maturation as a company. Along with leading the global expansion of the design team I helped my team navigate the challenges of the company's notorious culture, and did my best to influence company policy for the good of its employees. Despite unfortunate leadership obstacles, I successfully implemented positive cultural changes within the Design team and guided my teams through extraordinarily difficult times with empathy, compassion and authenticity.

Airbnb 2017 - 2019

After leaving Uber I wanted to experience working at a company where design and business are closely intertwined and where design is a top enabler of the overall mission. There are few companies like this, and Airbnb is one of them. Its CEO, Brian Chesky, is a designer through and through, and he sees the world of business through the lens of design. After spending time getting to know Brian during the interview process, it was clear that Airbnb would deliver.

I began my tenure at the company leading the Homes Design team, which was responsible for the end to end guest experience, the hosting experience, the team managing Airbnb’s marketplace dynamics, worldwide growth, and city/regional policy; essentially 93% of Airbnb's business. Like Uber, Airbnb is a marketplace that manages the relationships between the two sides (guest and hosts) and where trust and safety are paramount. Unlike Uber, Airbnb’s marketplace sells and manages the end-to-end travel journey from home search and booking, to getting to the home, to the experience of the home, to the hospitality provided, to engagement with the locale and culture. Designing for the end-to-end trip requires impact far beyond the pixels. For example, for hosts, it’s about education (how do I improve my hospitality), expectation setting (are my photos accurate), coaching (how do I improve my rating), loyalty (should I book with another platform) , and reward (how do I increase my earnings).

Shortly after joining, Brian asked me to work directly with him to drive a company wide initiative to revamp the Homes experience (codenamed “Tomorrowland”). This nearly eight month journey placed me squarely in the center of the company coordinating product development and design, regional rollout, policy implications, and business development. Tomorrowland culminated in a massive event for Airbnb’s hosting community coupled with a major PR motion. You can view the Tomorrowland event, which was ultimately branded “Airbnb for Everyone,” here.

As my responsibilities grew, I had the opportunity to take on General Management of the Guest team, overseeing engineering, product, finance, data science, legal, operations, and of course design, for the end-to-end guest search and booking experience. The role provided deep exposure to all sides of the business and team operations. During my time in this role I rebuilt my cross-functional leadership team by bringing on new directors for PM, Engineering, Data, and Design. The team restructured its approach to Search, drove a project to envision a new Superguest loyalty program (the economics of which are very challenging at a company that doesn’t own its own inventory), built a mobile web experience, improved data pipeline accuracy, streamlined the identity verification and payments process, and delivered a range of targeted projects that increased booking conversion rate over time. It was thrilling and challenging, and ultimately helped me learn that while the GM role is fulfilling, a core focus on Design is ultimately most satisfying.

My experience at Airbnb taught me the importance of great design in driving business outcomes. It also taught me that great design doesn’t come easy. It requires a commitment to product craft and excellence that requires iterative work and the perspective that the design can always be better (which it always can be, logically speaking). And lastly, it requires an absolute commitment from every function across every level, from the CEO down to the interns.

Slack 2019 - Present

In my current role I’m the SVP of Design at Slack, where we craft exceptional software that makes people’s working lives more simple, pleasant, and productive.

During my time at Slack our team has accomplished so much. We’ve cultivated a thriving design team culture, developed operational excellence, built an outstanding design leadership team, hired a great team overall, and elevated our product quality. Oh, and we’ve shipped an incredible amount of outstanding software including the most significant product redesign in the company’s history.

Although Slack is now over 10 years old, we still have so much to accomplish. Up this year is evolving Slack from the world’s best collaboration software a true operating system for work. Slack is poised to be the hub through which all work flows far more efficiently and effectively, integrating with augmenting your existing software tools along the way.